the office of mayor, and must have been a man of literary or theological interests, as Laud, at that time fellow of St. John's College, acted as godfather to his son William. Under these circumstances it was natural that Chillingworth should be destined to a university career. He was educated at a grammar school in Oxford, and in 1618 was made a scholar of Trinity College. He took his degree of B.A. in 1620, and owing to his growing reputation as a scholar was elected fellow of his college on 10 June 1628.
Chillingworth's connection with Laud led to an episode which is discreditable to them both. Alexander Gill, an usher in St. Paul's School, was in the habit of visiting old friends at Oxford, and in the heat of a convivial conversation in the grove of Trinity College used some strong expressions against the king, and praised Felton's murder of the Duke of Buckingham. For this he was called before the Star-chamber on 6 Nov., was degraded from the ministry, deprived of his university degree, and sentencea to lose his ears. Aubrey (Lives of Eminent Men, ii. 285) says that Chillingworth sent Laud 'weekly intelligence of what passed in the university,' and it is exceedingly probable from the nature of the evidence against Gill that the information in his case came from Chillingworth (Masson, Life of Milton, i. 178 note). If so, Chillingworth's communications to Laud must have been singularly indiscreet, and Laud must have used them unscrupulously; and it was well for Chillingworth that he was turned from political interests to ecclesiastical controversy.
To the discussion of the religious questions which agitated the university at that time Chillingworth brought an impartial and well-balanced mind, a large store of learning, and a keen power of dialectics. He delighted in argument and discussion, and his talents won him the intimacy of such men as Sir Lucius Cary, John Hales, and Gilbert Sheldon (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury). The question which was uppermost in Oxford was the controversy against the church of Rome, and into this Chillingworth plunged with ardour. He measured swords with a Jesuit, who went by the name of John Fisher, who was busied in Oxford with the defence of the Roman position. Frequent arguments with Fisher led Chillingworth to doubt the logical basis of the Laudian theology, which was then prevalent among his Oxford friends. The Laudian school insisted upon ecclesiastical order and ecclesiastical authority; Chillingworth was not satisfied with the evidence for the continuity of the protestant church. He was acutely susceptible to the Jesuit arguments against Luther as a schismatic who had no evidence of a commission, human or divine, for his revolutionary action; he was keenly conscious of the excesses of some protestant bodies, and saw in protestantism no machinery for suppressing heresy or restoring the unity of the church (Knott, in 'Directions to be observed by N. N.,' p. 37, gives Chillingworth's summary of his reasons for joining the church of Rome, and this summary is acknowledged to be genuine by Chillingworth, 'Preface to the Author of Charity Maintained'). In short, Chillingworth, as he wrote to Sheldon, was attracted by the idea of an infallible church, and saw no other church save that of Rome which claimed infallibility in matters of faith. Wearied by the perpetual controversies in which he had hitherto lived, he sought a refuge in the Roman church.
Chillingworth's conspicuous abilities made him an important convert, and the Jesuits determined to find him employment. In 1630 he went to the college ot Douay, where he was urged to put in writing an account of the motives which had led him to make his religious change. Perhaps this was hardly judicious treatment of one who sought above all things relief from inward questionings. However, Chillingworth undertook the task imposed upon him, and with a sense of new responsibility his intellectual fairness again revived. He felt it his duty to weigh afresh the arguments of his former friends, and Laud, then bishop of London, began a series of letters to his godson, which had the effect of turning his mind to a new line of inquiry (Wharton, Hist. of the Troubles and Trial of William Laud, p. 227). The result was that Chillingworth, as he says himself, 'upon better consideration became a doubting papist.' He left Douay in 1631 and returned to Oxford, where he pursued his theological inquiries with an impartial mind, till in 1634 he again declared himself to be a protestant, and published a statement of the motives which induced him to become a Romanist, together with a confutation of them (a later summary of this paper is in his 'Additional Discourses,' No. 8).
Though Chillingworth abandoned the church of Rome, he did not at once return to the church of England. His mental struggles had led him to seek an intellectual basis for belief which rested on something deeper than any ecclesiastical system. He had left the church of England because the church of Rome seemed to offer a firmer foundation for a system which was capable of logical expression. When he found that this also was open to objections, he slowly
